Theater: Love Match

• Share

FILUMENA by Eduardo de Filippo

There is a narrow line between sentimentality and mawkishness, and not many writers can walk it without falling into the swamp of syrupy sugar waiting below. Eduardo de Filippo, the Italian playwright, is a rare exception. Filumena, which ran for two years in London, may be the easiest, most companionable show on Broadway. It is warm, undemanding and, in its own modest way, always enjoyable.

The title character once ornamented a Naples brothel, but for the past 25 years she has been the housekeeper of one of her former customers, Domenico Soriano. Finally, after years of his indifference, she pretends that she is dying, tricking him into a deathbed wedding. A miraculous recovery naturally follows, and Filumena tells Domenico why she deceived him. She has three grown sons, whom she has kept secret all these years, and she wants them to bear his name. Her moment of triumph is fleeting, however. She discovers that a marriage induced by fraud has no legal standing; she has outwitted only herself and must now leave Domenico's home. But before she goes she plants a bomb under his chair: one of her three boys is also his.

It would be unfair to describe the resolution of this ancient script except to say that it is happy. The chief joy of this production is not the plot, in any case, but the amusing game of thrust and parry carried on by Joan Plowright and Frank Finlay as Filumena and her quarry. They are an even—which is to say delightful—match, and they have been elegantly directed by Plowright's husband, Laurence Olivier. —Gerald Clarke